Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Greatest Man You've (probably) Never Heard Of

The Greatest Man You’ve Never Heard Of: Norman Borlaug, An American Hero [Michigan Capitol Confidential]

The phrase "The Green Revolution" sounds like it should be about pyrates killing whalers, or tree huggers killing loggers, or something, but it actually refers to the work of Norm Borlaug:
Make developing countries self sufficient in food by teaching them how to use modern agricultural techniques that are easy to implement. Borlaug spent most of his time in Mexico, Pakistan and India, and focused on five areas: crop cultivars (seeds), irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization. His successes were remarkable.
Borlaug, "one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom", was already in the process of making Third World countries self-sufficiant in agriculture when Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb; you know, we're all gonna die of starvation by 1999 at the latest.

Watermelon schmuck.

Anyway.  A sign of Borlaug's wisdom:
More than 40 years ago Borlaug wrote, "One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy."
h/t Insty.

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